Cold War
by Even.The.Stars.Refuse.To.Shine
Summary: Clarke didn't know that saving her people would start a war. But with a bounty on her head and the weight of a love that never was on her shoulders, she is forced to choose between accepting her past or letting it destroy her. Bellarke set post-season 2.


Chapter 1

Clarke knew the Reapers were coming long before she saw them.

She crouched low in the tall ferns, watching and listening. Bright flames flickered between the trees, and a breeze carried the sounds of howls and vicious laughter.

Her chest rose and fell unevenly as she waited for the Reapers to pass. Even after months of being alone on the Ground, they still terrified Clarke.

It wasn't that she wasn't used to them – she _was. _She had encountered them more times than she liked to remember, and each escape had been narrower than the last. In truth, she was afraid of them because of what they symbolised – the Mountain Men, and what it had taken to finally defeat them. She had thought that leaving Camp would make the guilt easier to bear, but removing herself from the constant reminders hadn't seemed to ease the pain.

When the hoots and yells rose above the sound of her own breathing, Clarke stiffened, crouching lower and pressing her back against a tall, sturdy pine. The smell of the forest filled her nostrils; the sharp, fresh scent of pinecones, overlapped with the stifling moisture of black soil.

Then another fragrance caught Clarke's attention.

The blazing torches that the Reapers carried sent billows of smoke into the cool night air, and made Clarke's eyes water.

_They are too close, _she thought.

She reached down and scooped up some soil. Hastily, she applied it to her blouse, which was torn and already crusted with mud in an attempt cover her scent, and shifted away from the hoarse, wild cries of the Reapers. Ducking down so that the ferns obscured her golden head, Clarke crawled across the leafy forest floor, slowly at first, but faster as she approached an enormous boulder that must have tumbled down from the mountains. She inched her way up to it, and wedged herself between it and one of its smaller companions. The noises were retreating now, back into the thickness of the trees, and she breathed out a sigh of relief.

A twig snapped a few metres away.

Freezing, Clarke's heart thundered inside her chest. She didn't dare move from her hiding place. Her eyes darted between the trees, watching for any movement, as her hand slid to her thigh to grip the small blade she kept there. Her fingers gripped the handle so tightly that they throbbed. It was then that she realised that the woods had grown unnervingly quiet; the only thing Clarke could hear was her own, frantic heartbeat.

Something quick and dark lunged out of the trees.

Clarke stumbled out of the gap and rolled away from the thing, drawing her knife in one fluid movement. She turned, raising the blade, and faced her attacker. The moon illuminated its face, which looked ghostly and washed-out in the pale light.

It was a Reaper.

That much was obvious – black hair hung limply around its face, matted with what looked like blood, and the sneer that twisted its mouth was filled with a kind of malice that Clarke had never seen before in another human being. It glared at Clarke with beady eyes that glinted in their sockets, and Clarke stared back.

She knew it was pointless to run.

With a gleeful cry, the Reaper dove at her, slicing a dagger through the air as it plunged forwards. Clarke sidestepped it, keeping it in her line of sight as it whirled back round to face her. It was fast – faster than Clarke, who was exhausted from lack of sleep and hadn't had a full meal in days. It lunged again, and she was too slow to dodge it.

The Reaper crashed into her, knocking her to the ground. Before she could get back up, the thing was _on _her, straddling her waist and pinning her arms with its knees. Clarke tried to throw it off, but it was heavier than she expected. It wouldn't budge. Crowing with laughter at her efforts, the Reaper brought up its blade – _showed _her, like it wanted her to see it before it killed her – and grinned, a wide, foul grin that split its face in half. The blade was dirty, she saw. Streaked with black, Clarke observed that it was a true hunting blade, made for butchery.

She couldn't even raise her own knife in defence. The thing brought its blade down, and pressed the toothed edge against her throat. Clarke tried to twist away, but it just pressed harder, until she felt it break the skin. A steaming bead of blood ran down her neck, followed by another, and another. It was starting to hurt.

Clarke could not believe she was about to die like this. She had survived an entire spectrum of crappy situations, ranging from bad to worse, but couldn't handle a lone Reaper? It was beyond incomprehensible – it was _embarrassing._ As the knife dug deeper into her throat, she thought of all the people she was letting down. It had been months since she had seen any of them, but it felt like years … and she missed them. She missed her mom, Abby, and her friends – Raven, Octavia, Jasper, Monty … Bellamy.

Even thinking about the man she had left behind made a dull ache bloom across her chest. She'd always told herself that she would see him again before it came to this moment, but now, that seemed impossible.

Clarke lifted her leg and, in one last bid at freedom, hitched her foot against the Reaper's shoulder. She shoved. To her surprise, the Reaper toppled off her and landed on its back against the ground. It let out a startled cry, leapt up off the floor, and backed away from Clarke. They circled each other, knives out, sizing up their opponent. It seemed like they were evenly matched – they were of the same height, though Clarke was thinner, but she had experience and training on her side. The Reaper was female, she thought, barely able to make out the feminine curve of its cheekbones and ski-slope nose, but it was hard to tell.

All she saw was a monster.

It had started to inch closer, towards the boulder, and Clarke let it. A few seconds passed before it was within stabbing distance, but as soon as it was in line with the huge, misshapen rock, she leaped forward, shoving it against the cold stone. It fought back fiercely, but she pinned its wrist to the boulder, so that the saw-toothed blade tumbled from its grasp.

Clarke sunk her knife into its chest. Her aim was true; the handle protruded from its ribs, just off-centre. The Reaper gasped, then choked, and Clarke felt it sag against her, its body heavy against her own. She lowered it to the ground, and removed her knife from its chest. A spray of blood gushed from the wound.

It took a moment for it to die, and Clarke watched it as its eyelids fluttered, mouth gasping for breath. Where the blood spilled, it steamed in the frigid night air.

Then it was over.

The breathing stopped; fists uncurled, long, pale fingers stretching towards the sky; slate grey eyes glassed over, unseeing. Clarke rolled back on her heels, leaning against the boulder for support. She brought her fingers up to her throat, and touched the warm, sticky blood that had congealed there. It wasn't a deep cut, but it stung – she hoped it wasn't infected. That knife had looked pretty grim.

"_Yu gonplei ste odon,"_ Clarke said gently, sliding the girl's eyes shut with her fingertips. It was easier to see her as human, now that she was still and quiet, without the cruel glint in her eyes or the knife in her hands. _This wasn't her choice, _Clarke reminded herself. She was a victim of the Mountain Men as much as Clarke had been.

With a weary sigh, Clarke heaved herself into a standing position. As much as she wanted to just sink down into the ferns and sleep, she knew she couldn't stay here, in this part of the forest. The Reapers would realise one of their own was missing, and when they did …

A shiver ran down Clarke's spine. She didn't want to think about it. Instead, she picked up the knife that the Reaper had dropped and tucked it into her belt, and then searched the body for any other weapons. She found a few strips of dried meat in its pocket, and her stomach gurgled hungrily at the promise of food, but she tossed it aside, not trusting that it wasn't, well, _human. _She wasn't that hungry.

Clarke kept searching, and just as she uncovered a slim, relatively clean scalpel hidden inside the Reaper's boot, a gust of wind rustled the ferns, and the unpleasant scent of burning wood filled her lungs.

Blood turned ice-cold in her veins.

Down the mountain, between the tall, slender pines, dozens of torches burned bright against the blackness of the forest. Yells erupted from the gloom, the kind of shouting that screamed _we are ready to fight. _

They had found her.

Clarke stumbled away from the dead girl's body, the scalpel clutched in her fist. She began sprinting up the tree-studded slope. It was a steep ascent, one that ran all the way up to a snow-capped peak hundreds of metres above the ground, but Clarke was used to travelling uphill. Her legs burned with the effort of it, but she didn't slow her pace – if she did, she would die, no question.

In the end, it didn't really matter how fast she ran.

Within minutes, the shouts and hoots had grown to a deafening volume, and Clarke slowed to a halt. An arrow went whizzing past her ear. She turned slowly. Her pursuers had stopped, and began to spread out in a circle around her, trapping her inside a ring of fire. They screamed at each other in a language she didn't understand. But she did recognise one word: _Jus. _

Blood.

Clarke had no doubt that she was going to die. The Reapers watched her delightedly, probably fantasising about how they were going to butcher her. There were at least a dozen of them, most of them male. Between them, she would make a pitiful meal. They seemed to think so, too, because they had started to brawl. One of the males, a seven foot tall giant, pushed one of the smaller Reapers out of the way. The smaller one shoved back, earning him a backhander across the face, and he was hurled through the air. He landed on his back barely three paces from Clarke.

As far as bad situations go, this one was definitely topping the scale. But Clarke had never been the kind of person to go down without a fight.

She shouted, loud enough to match even the Reapers' wild screams, and threw herself at the fallen man. He either wasn't expecting it, or he was still stunned from the blow, because he didn't fight back when Clarke buried the scalpel in his neck.

The rest of the group was silent for a moment as Clarke yanked the blade back out of the man's throat. Bright red, gushing blood spilled onto her leather boots.

Then the giant took a step forward, making a noise that was something between a laugh and a growl, and raised his hand, which Clarke now saw held a long, heavy-looking wooden club. He stalked towards her, his eyes promising death. The others didn't move to stop him – she was _his._

Up close, he looked enormous – he towered over Clarke, scowling down at her with cold, steely eyes. He raised his club high over his shoulder, preparing to swing, and –

_Crack._

The giant fell to the floor.

_Crack, crack!_

Two more Reapers hit the ground, and in the few seconds that it took for the rest of them to realise what was happening, another was down. Clarke stood, paralysed, staring at the hulking _thing_ at her feet. A small, dark, circular wound marked his temple. A gunshot.

_Crack, _another.

Clarke had to admit, the shooter's aim was good – brilliant, even. She heard a shot, and in an instant, another Reaper had collapsed. There were about half a dozen left, and when a pair of them scattered, trying to escape the gunfire, they too were gunned down. One of the remaining Reapers, a smallish man with tattoos covering every inch of his bald head, ignored the barrage and went straight for Clarke, knife in hand.

She dodged under his outstretched arm, pushing him against the nearest tree and splitting his throat. It gaped at her like a grotesque mouth, but she was past feeling nauseous or repulsed; she simply shoved the body aside.

The gunfire had quieted now, but there was still one Reaper left. This one was female, by the look of it, and she was only a few feet away from Clarke. Too close – she kicked out and struck Clarke in the stomach. Clarke fell, coughing, the scalpel tumbling from her fist. She raked her fingers through an ocean of pine needles, feeling for the smooth metal, but clasped a fist-sized rock instead. She flipped onto her back, arm raised, but the girl wasn't paying attention to her.

The Reaper stared off into the trees, her eyes wide and vacant. Then she swayed, and toppled forwards. Clarke rolled, and noticed the sharp gleam of a knife sticking out of her back, buried to the hilt. The girl smacked down beside her, limbs twitching.

The owner of the knife stood over her, silhouetted against fire – one of the torches had set alight the blanket of pine needles beneath them, and the flames now curled and twisted up one of the pine trunks, sending off crimson sparks. Clarke couldn't make out the stranger's face, but she recognised the angular set of his jaw and the loose, wavy hair. A lump caught in her throat, and she sucked in a quick breath.

The stranger stepped forward, and the flames threw amber light across his features. Clarke discerned dark, deep-set eyes and a wicked grin.

"Princess," Bellamy said, offering a hand to help her up. "Damn, is it good to see you."


End file.
